Telus and Bell team up, plan to roll out 4G

By Mack D. Male · October 10, 2008 at 9:30pm

Big news today in Canada’s wireless industry. Telus and Bell announced they are partnering to upgrade their wireless network to 3G nationwide, laying the groundwork for an eventual move to 4G. The move should put both companies on equal footing with Rogers, but playing catchup is expensive:

Although both companies declined to provide any clear insights to the cost of the upgrade, analysts expect it to be approximately between $750-million to $1-billion, split two ways between Bell and Telus. Mr. Entwistle said that initial capital expenditures for the new network are included in Telus’ original guidance of approximately $1.9-billion this year and is expected to be $750-million higher than historical levels in the following year.

I’m not sure how I missed it, but apparently rumors of this specific deal actually surfaced back in July. The first rumor, that Telus would switch to GSM, started back in January. The announcement today covers the launch of a network with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA/GSM). Bell and Telus hope to have the network ready just in time for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. After that the goal is to move to LTE (4G), which is in line with the plans of most other carriers around the world.

Clearly this is great news for Canadians. Having a single network standard will bring cost benefits, and faster time-to-market for hardware. I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s the Telus press release, and here’s the Bell press release. Both are incredibly similar, though neither one mentions the other! I guess we should use the term “partnership” lightly.

Telus Mobility surprises me with a free gift!

By Mack D. Male · March 5, 2008 at 9:40pm

I received an interesting package in the mail today from Telus Mobility. A little white box with the phrase “Happy Anniversary” on the front was waiting for me! I opened it up to find a letter thanking me for being a customer since 2003. Actually, I’ve been a customer since 2000 but my first three-year contract was under my business partner’s name. I’ve written about Telus quite a few times on my blog, sometimes because of something bad, sometimes because of something good. This is obviously one of the good things!

Wondering what was in the box? In addition to the letter, they sent me a three-in-one phone charger! It’s a pretty neat little gadget, plugs into the wall or a car outlet, and has a couple of cables with different connectors on it. And a little bag to store the cables in.

Thanks Telus! My current contract is up around November, and while it’s unlikely I’d have gone through the hassle of switching anyway, this makes it even easier to decide. Combined with some customer service improvements recently, Telus Mobility is starting to do more things right than wrong. Now if only they could get the cool new phones sooner

Telus Mobility switching to GSM?

By Mack D. Male · January 13, 2008 at 2:54pm

It’s a headline I never thought I’d read – Telus considers dumping is ‘Betamax’ of wireless networks. Apparently executives are taking a look at how feasible it is to move from the current CDMA standard to the more widely used GSM. As a Telus Mobility subscriber this is exciting news! I’m not holding my breath though.

The idea "has been presented at the board level and is being actively considered," said one source familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified. The source cautioned that there were no guarantees Telus will go ahead with a changeover, which analysts say could cost about $500 million.

The Rogers network is the only GSM one in Canada at the moment, with both Telus and Bell operating on CDMA. There are significant advantages to being on GSM – most new phones are launched for it first (such as the RAZR and iPhone) and Telus could get a cut of the roaming fees that Rogers collects.

Seems to me that if they were going to do this, they should have done it years ago. The article points out that "4G" networks are on the way, though no one knows how many years it will be until a standard is adopted. It would suck if Telus switched to GSM, only to have to build out a 4G network soon thereafter.

Read: TheStar.com

UPDATE (10/6/2009): The new HSPA+ network built by Telus and Bell will be live in November, when both carriers will start selling the iPhone.

Did you have problems with Telus Mobility last night?

By Mack D. Male · July 28, 2007 at 11:43am

I just got off the phone with a client service representative at Telus Mobility. The good news is that their support service is still fast and effective, as I mentioned back in May. The bad news is that the Telus network doesn’t seem incredibly stable.

Around 9 PM last night, my phone stopped working. I couldn’t make or receive any calls, nor could I send or receive text messages. Every attempt was greeted with an annoying “beep beep beep” and text messages just disappeared into the unknown. I was kind of lost without my phone, and I mentioned to Megan that I should almost buy a backup pay-as-you-go phone on another network for precisely this type of thing. She just laughed!

Calls started working again around midnight, but text messaging still was not working this morning. Hence the call to Telus. The service representative asked a bunch of questions, and by the way I was answering, I think she got the hint and asked if this had happened before. I said yes, unfortunately, and asked her to send the clearing message. She did, and also said she was going to “do a reset” which means I have to turn my phone off for twenty minutes. Stange, I know. Hopefully it works.

I wasn’t the only one with problems it seems:

I’d like to know what happened, and if it was limited to just Edmonton and area or whether it was more widespread. Too bad they suck at communicating that sort of thing. Telus needs a blog!

Telus and Bell to merge?

By Mack D. Male · June 21, 2007 at 4:52pm

I didn’t see this one coming, but apparently Telus is interested in acquiring Bell parent BCE Inc. Such a move would create a truly national telecommunications company here in Canada, but I am not sure that’s such a good thing. Telus CEO Darren Entwistle seems convinced though:

“This acquisition will create a strong, integrated competitor that would generate continued expansion and growth in the years ahead,” CEO Darren Entwistle said in a media conference call.

“This particular acquisition makes enormous sense for our country. This move will create a truly national provider with the size to stand along side any telecom company in the world.”

Fellow blogger Mark Evans speculates on the deal and wonders if Rogers and Shaw would cozy up in response.

Who knew the Canadian telecommunications industry could be so interesting?

Read: TheStar.com

Telus Mobility Impresses

By Mack D. Male · May 29, 2007 at 10:23pm

As you may know, my mobile phone provider is Telus Mobility. I have used them for years and for the most part, I’ve been content. Not excited, not angry, just content. I did write about some text message troubles I had back in January though, and noted:

…there was absolutely no wait time to talk to someone (minus the stupid speech recognition menu which took a couple minutes). This is a BIG improvement for Telus…normally you have to wait forever!

On Friday, I had another somewhat similar experience. My text messaging was not working as expected, so I called support. Right away I talked to a friendly lady who told me they were experiencing troubles in Alberta and B.C. with text message delivery. She connected me to network services anyway, to see if my problem was something more.

After about 15 minutes of waiting to talk to someone, I gave up. I hoped the problem was simply what the first lady had told me – temporary delays. Turns out she was right – my messages started working again late on Friday, and I started receiving a bunch of messages yesterday and today that were not delivered over the weekend.

As I walked in the door tonight around 7 PM though, it got even better! My cell rang and when I answered I was greeted by a recorded message from Telus Mobility. Turns out they were very sorry for the delay I had experienced Friday, and to apologize, they credited $5 to my account.

That’s the kind of thing that will make me a happy customer instead of a content customer. They went the extra mile. Well done Telus Mobility!

Ringtones are a complete rip-off

By Mack D. Male · February 15, 2007 at 3:24pm

I’ve never purchased a ringtone for my cell phone, and I don’t ever intend to – they are just too damn expensive. How expensive? On Telus, ringtones cost $3.50 CDN each. With Bell, they range from $2.50 to $4.00 CDN each. And on Rogers, comparable ringtones start at $3.00 CDN each, excluding a 75 cent download fee.

So after a little math we get an average cost of $3.50 CDN for a single ringtone. What else could you buy for $3.50?

My favorite – two items from the McDonald’s Value Picks Menu. And for 49 cents more, you could get one of the Value Meals.
You could purchase three complete songs from iTunes.
Two 710 ml bottles of Gatorade at Wal-Mart.
Almost two Grande coffees at Starbucks, or two Extra Large coffees at McDonald’s.
You could store 20 GB of data at Amazon S3 for a month. Or 1 GB for 20 months. Or you could transfer up to 15 GB in a month.
Any one of the 63,275 items available on eBay in just the DVD, HD-DVD & Blu-ray category that are less than $3.50.
A breakfast sandwich from Tim Horton’s.
And of course, three items from pretty much any dollar store!

Can you think of a worse deal? Cupcakes are expensive. Perhaps gas – you could only get 4.3 liters in Edmonton today for $3.50 CDN. Transportation in general sucks actually. One trip on ETS costs $2.50 CDN.

The high price of ringtones is just sick. Why pay Bell $4.00 for a ringtone when you could pay them $5.99 and get an entire movie streamed to your phone? It’s absurd.

Please don’t buy ringtones – it only encourages the wireless carriers to charge such ridiculous prices.

Txt Msg Troubles on Telus

By Mack D. Male · January 15, 2007 at 5:14pm

I guess you could say I’m a bit of a text messaging addict. It’s a very useful technology, and I try to make the most of it. So when something went wrong on Saturday that prevented me from receiving messages, I almost went crazy! In the morning, Dickson had sent me a message. Throughout the day I continued to get the same message, over and over, until I stopped receiving messages altogether around 6 PM.

I called Telus today to get it fixed, and after a quick phone call, everything was back to normal (I then received 23 text messages and 3 voice mails all at once). The lady that helped me was very friendly, and certainly seemed to know what she was doing. I asked her what went wrong, and this is what she said:

Sometimes if you are sent two messages at the same time, it causes problems with the queue. I was able to send two test messages to your phone that cleared up the jam.

Now I can only assume that she was trying to answer my question in layman’s terms, but still, doesn’t that sound like an odd reason? I mean what is the point of having a queue in the first place? The queue is there so that messages can be sent reliably, even if they are sent at the same time!

I’m really kind of curious about how the system works now. I also wonder if Telus is using an in-house system or a solution provided by a third party. Either way, it seems some improvements could be made!

Also: I should note that there was absolutely no wait time to talk to someone (minus the stupid speech recognition menu which took a couple minutes). This is a BIG improvement for Telus…normally you have to wait forever!

Canada to tax Income Trusts

By Mack D. Male · November 1, 2006 at 5:16pm

By now you’ve probably heard that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced today a new tax on income trusts. The decision has drawn lots of criticism, especially since it comes just three weeks after BCE proposed the biggest trust conversion in our nation’s history. Telus was another major corporation looking to transform itself to an income trust.

So what the heck is an income trust? That’s been my question throughout all of this. According to Wikipedia:

An income trust is an investment trust that holds income-producing assets. The term also designates a legal entity, capital structure and ownership vehicle for certain assets or businesses. Its shares or “trust units” are traded on securities exchanges just like stocks. The income is passed on to the investors, called “unitholders”, through monthly or quarterly distributions.

Interestingly, the article also points out that they are most common here in Canada.

Anyway, that definition helps a little, but not a lot. When I heard that “BCE wants to turn itself into an income trust”, I thought, “but they are a company?” So if I understand things correctly, they just wanted to save some money on taxes, and becoming an income trust would allow them to do so. And indeed, as the CBC article points out, BCE would have saved itself $800 million in taxes by 2008. That’s some serious dough.

Actually, it turns out the CBC article is more helpful in understanding things:

Trust conversions are increasing in popularity because trusts do not pay corporate tax. Instead, they pay out most of their income in distributions to unitholders, who then pay tax on those distributions at a preferential rate.

Clearly, the government was not happy that it would be losing so much tax money. Existing trusts have a four year grace period until the new tax takes effect, while new trusts face the new rules immediately.

I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. I simply don’t understand things enough to say one way or the other. Certainly the markets don’t like the new rules. My feeling is that companies like BCE and Telus simply discovered a weakness in the laws and sought to exploit it. The government realized it had a problem, and took immediate action. Which one of them is correct? I don’t know. Tax avoidance probably isn’t a good thing for the country, but on the other hand, the companies were not breaking any rules. I can only hope that Mr. Flaherty’s rhetoric about income trusts hurting the economy is true, and not just a statement made up for his own purposes.

Read: CBC News

Telus finally upgrading broadband network

By Mack D. Male · September 8, 2006 at 8:38pm

Dickson sent me this story today about Telus. I recently got rid of my Telus landline and while I am not a big fan of the company, I have been pretty happy with their mobile phone service, and until a couple years ago when I lost my static IP, I was happy with their ADSL service too. That said, the Internet offerings have always been truly “North American”, and by that I mean slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world. Finally though, Telus is going to make some changes:

Telus Corp. says it is investing nearly $800 million over the next three years to beef up its broadband network so it can offer its customers a wide range of new services, including high-definition television.

The company said its proposed infrastructure will allow it to double internet access, to speeds of 15 or 30 megabits a second.

That’s still a far cry from the 100 megabits/second you can get to your house in Hong Kong, for example, but it is markedly better than what we have now. Apparently the entire project will be completed by 2009 (at which time, the rest of the world will probably be faster still).

Read: CBC News